I don't think that this would be the only form that only occurs once in
Greek Literature and it is a correct form according to the morphology of
alpha contract verbs.
>I really think that we OUGHT to view this form (unless we can find other
>examples of an I)/AMAI perfect passive) as (a) a present passive (..."that
>she is (was) being healed"),
But the imperfect form IATO is attested in other lit. and would have said
this so much better, granted there is not much difference between the
so-called "historic presents" usage and the use of the present for the
imperfect. It does not happen much in Mark as I recall.
>as (b) a present middle (... "that he is
>healing [her]),
If that is the case, I would see it as intensive, "She knew in her body
that he, himself, healed (historic) her from the malady."
> or (c) as a solecism (of the sort that those who
>believe--as I used to believe myself--that Mark wrote bad Greek because he
>didn't know it very well; my present view is that Mark did not write bad
>Greek but that he incorporated bad Greek that he found in a source into his
>own redaction without improving the syntax or morphology).
But it is pervasive, even in the authorial comments and connecting
summaries (see esp. 8:14-21).
>Quite frankly, I don't think that the perfect passive is what would be
>expected here; more appropriate, in my opinion, would be either an aorist
>passive, I)A=QH, or a pluperfect passive, theoretically I)/ATO--IF we had
>reason to believe that the verb really has a perfect passive stem.
That makes the perfect in a couple of Latin translations more significant I
think.
>I grant that I may be very wrong on this matter, but I still think that
>someone way back there decided this issue on what he/she thought the
>context demanded, and everyone else played "follow the leader." I'm still
>hoping that somebody with access to the TLG "D" disk can find one or more
>other unquestionable instances of a perfect passive stem of the root I)A-.
>
Were the opinion not from divers places where there seems to be little
chance of influence or from people who tended to think critically, I would
share your suspicions. And there are a large number of Greek mss (albeit
from a later period) that give this form as perfect, and that after all is
the only evidence we have except what we suspect the writer would have
written.
Now I await the other shoe.
Carlton Winbery
LA College